Perhaps Poem by Madhup Mohta

If I am not you, I cease to be me
And if you do not remember me
Perhaps it is that you have ceased to be.

My words inscribed on your mirror
In inflamed shades of red, with your
Lipstick, were me till you erased them
The morning after, and yet I wonder
Whether sprinkling the mirror clean
Undid the autumn's amorous folly and
Whether aches I inscribed on your lips
Upon your breast were remedied too
With the cleaning of the fire place and the
Rinsing of residual remains in wine glasses
And when the butt ends in ash tray were no
More, and when the color escaped the
Roses in yellow or red or peach or white
And when the Polianthes stems that
Informed our senses through the night
Were no longer fragrant, did the memory
Of my touch cease to ignite your being.

And I can never cease to wonder, for
I know that favours of you finite frenzy
Flow now in my words in infinite detail
In letter and in spirit and in colors of
Dawn, the Reddish Magenta, the Violet,
The Scarlet, the Purple that now inform
My desires as they flow in my veins
And my eyes though the restless nights
That I become you and nothing but you.

Whenever, yes where ever, I have kissed
Your palms, as a drop of dew or rain or as
A snowflake, or have flowed in the drop of
Ink in my pen, or at other times in more than
A drop of blood to covet you or in sweat to
Earn you, I remember that the teardrop
In your eyes was me and when you cry now
Do you still shed me or was I already shed
Long ago, and do you go on longinging for me
For if I do not belong to you, I just stop being.

When you look at the tendrils now, clinging to
A tree on the mountainside in gentle breeze
Or when you look at Sodium Vapour Lights
Casting shadows on time, on trees and on
Tresses that touched me and do you or do
You not remember the tender tremble of
Of your voice that prescribed my nemesis
With that melancholic melody at midnight.

And now in this instant when you are so near
And yet so far and dancing a different dance
When I tend to be you and you pretend to
Be mine, and now when I begin to comprehend
You and this, you have become but a distant dream,
And here as I stand at my window and look at
Different pines and indifferent snow and define
And redefine love and learn what you mean to me.
As I live a different date and day, day after day
And now that you recede with assured certainity
And with definitive disdain, make promises in vain, and
Remains of your memories are all that remains with me.

As I walk past each moment we were determined
To remember and destined to relive at leisure
Of frolic and frenzy and frantic motion and emotion
Those evanescent moments that are so peripheral
To you though still not beyond me and are still with me
At this desolate hour of despair as you sleep in bliss
Even as I miss you and want to kiss you, just kiss you

And after I have seen it all, the lonely mountains
Enveloped in snow inscribed on stone, and the
Oceans deep, with rivers dark in the under belly
And Peninsulae of grief and islands of emerald
Deserts of desperation and furious forests
And traversed the longitudes along time
With suspended disbelief and in bare anticipation
Relentless at first and now reconciled to be me
As I sit here listening to Ode to Joy while whispering
Sorrows at sunset, and contemplating redemption
I know I can neither be redeemed nor redeem you

Perhaps it is that you have ceased to be mine
I know for sure that if I am not you,
And if you do not remember me
Perhaps I have ceased to be me